The picture is more decisive in the battle for control of the House: the Dems currently are tipped to hold 227 to the GOP’s 206, with two races statistically tied.
This week’s Economist focuses on the race in Missouri - the famous bellwether ‘show me’ state which has successfully backed every victorious Presidential candidate since 1960 - where incumbent Republican senator Jim Talent (a name in search of a trait) is trailing feisty Democrat state auditor Claire McCaskill, who unsuccessful bid for the gubernatorial mansion in 2004.
In the flesh, Mr Talent is amiable but an awkward speaker: on the stump after the debate he had to remind his audience to clap. But he can draw on a reservoir of support from rural and Christian voters, who typically deplore the Democrats' tolerance of abortion and gay marriage. “If we had a real Christian party, I'd go with that,” says Larry Atkins, a minister attending a Talent speech in Waynesville, a small town north-east of Springfield. But failing that, Mr Talent “is a good moral person.”Two of the crunch campaign issues are Amendment 2, the Missouri Stem Cell Initiative - which would authorise stem-cell research within Missouri, and for Missourians to benefit from any cures produced - and Proposition B, which would raise the minimum wage to $6.50 an hour (that’s £3.45). Ms McCaskill supports both Amendment 2 (which Mr Talent opposes) and Proposition B (which Mr Talent has yet to take a position on).
The race is a toss-up, according to the polls. The result depends on who gets out the vote, says Mr Talent. Ms McCaskill agrees. The Republicans think they are the best at this, she tells her supporters, “But this time we've got the passion on our side.” Unsurprisingly, given Missouri's importance to the balance of power, the national Democratic and Republican parties are pitching in with oodles of cash and attack ads.
Both sides profess confidence. Ms McCaskill claims to be winning converts in conservative rural areas. One couple, she says, told her they used to vote Republican but were planning to switch because they no longer felt middle class, having lost their health insurance. “Jim Talent will win,” says Missouri's Republican governor, Matt Blunt, stumping for him with bone-crushing handshakes on the county courthouse steps in Rolla, south-east Missouri. Behind him, an eight-year-old girl, urged on by her mother, is giving Mr Talent a hand-written extract from the Bible.
The stakes have been upped considerably by the intervention of Michael J Fox, the symptoms of whose Parkinson’s Disease are painfully evident in this powerful advert recorded in support of Ms McCaskill’s Amendment 2 position:
And for those of us who too easily and too often stereotype the US stance on social issues according to our perception of scary-evangelical Christian Deep Southers, the Pew Research Centre report, Pragmatic Americans Liberal and Conservative on Social Issues (August 2006), is a reminder that things are rarely that simple:
Americans cannot be easily characterized as conservative or liberal on today's most pressing social questions. The public's point of view varies from issue to issue. They are conservative in opposing gay marriage and gay adoption, liberal in favoring embryonic stem cell research and a little of both on abortion. Along with favoring no clear ideological approach to most social issues, the public expresses a desire for a middle ground on the most divisive social concern of the day: abortion.For ‘Americans’ substitute ‘Britons’ and that paragraph would, I suspect, accurately reflect views here, too. As George Bernard Shaw (probably) said, “Two nations divided by a common language”. It's a statement which is still more true than false.
6 comments:
It would be interesting to see how the British would compare if asked the same questions in the same way and following a similar debate as has been going on in the states.
I suspect the British view on gay marriage would not be dissimilar but that our view on stem cell research and abortion may well be more liberal.
The one question they didn't go into detail on was about the teaching of creationism. On that one I suspect the British view would be very different!
Although I agree with most of what you said, I disagree with the information you posted about Americans being "conservative on gay marriage". I think the issue is more about psychotic christians making a lot of noise. Really, they are a relatively small group. And, as they say, the loudist gets all of the attention. On these issues they never poll the "liberal" northeast or coastal states. They go straight into the deep "conservative" south on all of these "wedge topics."
Lieberman has been showing a consistent lead of around 10% (that the Republican is averaging 5% gives a clue where those votes are coming from). I'm not sure though if there's been a poll since the televised debates last week.
Electoral vote's algorithm shows Connecticut as Dem, so that's 50R-49D-1I, which means that Cheney's casting vote still rides.`
Does anyone have any information on Vermont's race? Larry Sanders's brother Bernie, founder of the Community Land Trust movement more or less in the US (when Mayor of Burlington) is running for Senate having been an Independent Representative for the last few years.
Bernie has been consistently leading by about 30 points in Vermont over the last few months, despite his opponent taking a few pages out of the Karl Rove playbook of deeply unpleasant Republican politics. So, barring a major disaster, Bernie will be in the Senate in NOvember.
Lieberman and Sanders, the Independent Caucus. An odder couple its difficult to imagine......
Matt
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